‘TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES: OUT OF THE SHADOWS’ Movie Review – Heroes In A Half Film…

Post navigation

So Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 was overall a definitive improvement on the first film which was a disaster, still not a good film, but you can actually get a few moments of entertainment out of this film. First thing’s first… if you did not like the tones, humour, or characters of the first movie, not much has changed, so there’s a good chance you won’t respond to this much more than the other. But some improvements have been made meaning that at this rate maybe in 12 years we will get a TMNT movie that captured the tones of the cartoon perfectly. There is a little more of a focus on the turtles in this film, either that or there was a little less of the April O’Neil. The chemistry between the turtles was a tad better, there was a dash of that fun campy humour here and there and a few moments where you can have a good laugh. Where this film crashes and burns however is with how they handle the plot and the many new characters.

The turtles in this film at times really delved into that darker more serious rendition from the first film but overall they had a slightly more lighter tone in this film, cracking a few more jokes and showed some pretty decent and amusing chemistry. The best parts of this movie (yes there are good parts) were when it was focusing predominantly on the turtles, none of the other side characters apart from Casey Jones and maybe Will Arnett’s character really made a huge positive impact on the film. The human cast was mostly very meh, Megan Fox was just being the hot chick friend, Will Arnett was cashing in his paycheque, Tyler Perry was a crazy Neil deGrasse Tyson and uh…. Shredder was just there. Stephen Amell as Casey Jones was a great addition to the film, and probably the only one, he had a lot of character and charisma and was quite amusing. One or two moments he gets caught up in the silly humour, but overall the Arrow star elevates this film any chance he gets. Whether it is the Casey Jones from the show is debatable but here i thought he worked.

But the real garbage in this film were the villains, but also the plot. It is very unfocused, messy, and falls back on the same tropes as the first film and pretty much every transformers film… Seriously, it was like Deja Vu for the 10th damn time. And man was this film busay, the plot holes were real, it was like when this film got put on the chopping board someone went absolutely ham on this thing. Entire scenes connecting two events felt missing and it didn’t flow very well overall. And the way this film ends was like Paramount needed to wrap things up and get started on Transformers 9, so they finished everything in 5 minutes and moved on. Very rushed and not well thought through.

Seriously though, introducing Bebop, Rocksteady, Krang and bringing back Shredder all in the same film was a huge mistake because the film just didn’t know who to focus on as the villain and so no-one actually had enough screen time or development to be an interesting villain. Bebop and Rocksteady were introduced well and i was really digging their characters, but post-transformation they mostly became the device used for fart jokes and dumb humour. Shredder was about as useful in this film as those buttons on your jean pockets you never use, such a shame. And Krang, well he was most definitely an afterthought here, just thrown in the film as a device to get the main plot moving. Having no strong and entertaining villain really stuffed this film over and it could have been considered a good film if it had even one.

So Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 isn’t a good film, but there are some improvements upon the first film that when added together do let you enjoy parts of this film. It does have a lot of problems with their villains and the massive jumps in plot progression and unexplained conveniences but the good aspects such as parts of the humour manage to keep the film afloat. You should know by now whether it is for you or not, so enter at your own risk.